“Russia has the world’s best hackers.”

What else has to happen before the “SWIFT weapon” is used as a sanction against Russia?

Joe Biden announced very extensive countermeasures on Thursday evening (2/24/2022). The ten largest banks in Russia will be sanctioned as of Saturday, 2/26/2022 and will then no longer be able to trade dollars. It is about 50 billion dollars that these banks send every day via SWIFT. So Russia will be isolated from the Western economy! There are only a few businesses that are exempt from the sanction, especially in the field of energy.

If the West completely shuts down SWIFT for Russia, we would no longer be able to pay for natural gas – and Russia would stop supplying it.

How will Russia react to the current sanctions?

Already, we can expect Putin to view the current sanctions as a declaration of financial war. The ruble is internationally insignificant. Putin therefore cannot initiate an equivalent counter-sanction. Joe Biden did warn the Russians in his speech not to retaliate with cyber attacks in the West. However, security agencies have been preparing critical infrastructure for months. This includes financial systems and other basic services. We should be prepared for Putin to target the Western financial system for his state hackers.

What are the consequences for us of the current Russian cyberattacks?

What we now see in Ukraine as cyberattacks are pure sabotage actions. Websites are taken offline, ATMs are blocked, computers in government offices are deleted, and so on. It is not likely that Russian cyber warriors are explicitly targeting German companies these days. But there could be collateral damage from the current acts of sabotage, as in 2017 when the Russians successfully attacked the Ukrainian tax office. Ukrainian companies caught the so-called NotPetya virus in rows back then, which wiped all their data. Large corporations such as the industrial conglomerate Maersk, the pharmaceutical giant Merck and Beiersdorf in Hamburg were globally affected through their corporate subsidiaries in Ukraine.

What kind of cyber attacks can harm our financial system?

If someone wants to do a lot of damage to a bank, they have to get to payment systems like SWIFT. This is the only way to “book away” money. However, the security systems in the payment system are so strong worldwide that normal criminals cannot overcome them.

But we saw five years ago that hackers from North Korea managed to do just that at the Central Bank of Bangladesh – and steal $80 million. It takes hackers, SWIFT experts, and front companies in developing countries (such as the Philippines) to withdraw larger sums. All of this is enormously costly – but Russia is a major power in cyber space. And Russia has the world’s best hackers.

What would be the consequences of such virtual raids?

For example, the hackers could send virus-infected emails to many European banks. Where these mails succeed, they would then try to shimmy their way up to the SWIFT system and extract money.

If even a few banks were to succeed in this, a new crisis in the banking world would ensue. If the reliability of banks can no longer be guaranteed when it comes to payments, this will greatly unsettle our economy.

How can we protect ourselves from cyber attacks?

Any company that depends on IT needs to make sure it can manage the consequences of a cyber intrusion. At some point, a careless employee opens the virus in an email and lets the hacker in with it.

The critical systems must be protected in such a way that even in such a case no irreversible damage occurs. And it’s not enough to believe that – a company must be able to guarantee that. At Consileon, we have certified security auditors who perform a Payment Security Check for companies. To be sure, cyberattacks are rarely pinpoint targeted at a company. But it could hit any company due to the high degree of global IT interconnectedness.